Hall of Whispers
Andreas set out to ask people to share stories about their experience of being alive, using the Internet of the early 1990s. Of this experiment, he wrote:
"Hall of Whispers takes its name from an ancient Babylonian myth of a specially constructed room in one of the ziggurats (stepped pyramids), in which the walls were so highly polished that a whisper would stay alive forever. I have an image of the electronic networks whispering ceaselessly with the voices of our times.
"The form of the project is deceptively simple . . . to create a situation . . . where we could join each other around a technological campfire . . . to create a virtual community using an ancient fundamental of community-making: shared stories . . . a council model for understanding our world . . . that it is in the sharing that greater wisdom evolves. Finally, in a turbulent world, it is easy to lose sight of the small beauties and moments of grace that occur constantly around us. I wanted Hall of Whispers to give voice to that side of ourselves that recognizes that this is as much a time of renewal as it is a time of decay."
Using the nascent Internet as well as fax, phone and standard mail, Andreas ultimately gathered more than 4,000 stories from around the world. At the time, Andreas was living with his wife and two young sons in Berkeley, and was focusing artistically on stone sculpting. "I had lots of white, black and beige around but no color." Finally, his wife is reported to have told him, "Please don't talk to me again until you have some color."
Read more about this topic: Brian Andreas
Famous quotes containing the words hall and/or whispers:
“For a hundred and fifty years, in the pasture of dead horses,
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs,
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter
frost heaved your bones in the ground—old toilers, soil makers:
O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“In spite of all her faults her name was so holy to him that it had never once passed his lips since her death, except in low whispers to himself,—low whispers made in the perfect, double-guarded seclusion of his own chamber. “Cora, Cora,” he had murmured, so that the sense of the sound and not the sound itself had come to him from his own lips.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)